SR 05:154 - Laserfiche WebLink

ATTACHMENT 2 The staff reports contains a number of errors in the favor of approving the project. There are also a number of omissions regarding issues that have a negative impact on the neighborhood. Below, I will point these issues. Overall, the church has been very intransient on most of the major points of contention with the neighborhood. Only one change has been made, namely the deletion of the driveway onto National Park Rd. The major objections are twofold: 1)The parking lot on the north side of the property adjacent to homes and park land. And, 2) the scope of the project and its impact on the neighborhood. There is also concern about future church plans and the exacerbation of existing problems. To their credit, the planning staff has tried to ameliorate some of these impacts. Unfortunately, the best solutions they have been able to come up with are only verbal promises from the church that are easily disregarded and nearly impossible to enfome. The neighborhood has had some bad experiences with this in the past. It is vital that any mitigation to the project take a physical form that cannot be easily circumvented or eliminated. What I would like to see changed in this project is: 1) Elimination of any parking north of the existing building. 2) Moving the phase I multi-purpose room to the north side of the existing building 3) Scaling back the Phase II worship building to the point where realistic parking capacity existing on site without the use of neighborhood streets 4) The existing day care area be mitigated with a sound wall to replace the existing steel fencing. That the National Park Rd frontage be upgraded to remove the present eyesore and noise problems 5) That no expansion of the day care facilities, school facilities, etc. ever be permitted. Severe and automatic penalties for violations of this condition should be incorporated into any project approval. The parking lot north of the existing building would be a visual blight to the surrounding neighborhood as well as a source of noise. It would have an extremely negative effect on the character of the neighborhood. The staff report did not mention that there is a small park area just north of the church property. At one of the public meetings at the church, their project architect stated their intention to use the park as a noise buffer for the adjacent homes. As mentioned above, this is against city policy. The proposed project has not been materially changed in the area since that comment. There was some discussion at the public meetings of walling off the parking lot to mitigate the noise and visual problems. Unfortunately construction of such a wall would generate worse problems than it would solve. It would create an isolated area behind the Masonic lodge